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I know parents complain about teachers all the time in Singapore, and I am determined to keep a clean record.

Unfortunately, yesterday I received my first ever complaint from one concerned parent.

The issue brought up was that her daughter has enrolled into my class for the past 6 months but still can’t identify basic vocabulary like “window” or “door”. Furthermore, I was also accused of not allowing my students to bring their books home. (I have no idea how that accusation came about, since I don’t keep a single textbook, workbook or exercise book.)

Being the professional and responsible person that I am, I took full blame of the complaint, but secretly vowed to get down to the bottom of the issue.

Today, with the help of some other teachers, I managed to identify who the student was, and it explained a lot of things.

Firstly, she just enrolled into the school this year and was placed in the primary 5 class. She has a history of switching schools for whatever reasons unknown. For the past 6 months that I have taught the primary 5 students, my emphasis has been on the proper usage of present tense and past tense. If you want to learn vocabulary like “window” or “door”, you should be in primary 2 or primary 3, because that’s the level you get introduced to simple vocabulary. You may come without a solid background in English, but if you are enrolled into my primary 5 class, you can’t expect me to be teaching primary 2 or primary 3 vocabulary during my lessons. If you ask me for a solution, I am sorry I will not slow down my class just for one pupil, but you should enroll your child for tuition classes.

And secondly, I noticed that this pupil isn’t even regular in her attendance. There are only 4 hours of English lessons each week, so if you miss 2-3 days of school per week, you probably only get 1-2 hours of English lessons every week. I am an English teacher, not a magician. I can’t perform magic or miracles.

I am not afraid to voice out because I feel that parents also have a part to play in their children’s upbringing.

While I take responsibility for whatever happens in school, parents have to take responsibility for their own children’s development at home.

Additional commentary: If your child has learning disabilities, please seek proper treatment. As much as you would like your child to grow up in the same environment as everybody else, you need to acknowledge that your child needs extra help.

And with this, I would like to say that I still maintain a clean record.

This is my last weekend before school reopens on Monday. With another 6 months left on my remaining contract, I guess it’s also time to make plans with regards to where I should go from here.

After teaching my students for the past semester, I am emotionally attached to them and would certainly love to watch them grow up. At the same time, I am also receiving very tempting offers from other schools. One thing I know for sure is that if I were to start teaching in the other schools, their expectations of me are much higher and I would have to re-learn how to work around their systems. Currently I am very comfortable where I am, being able to dodge all the unnecessary arrows and avoid extra work.

I am also thinking of developing my own start up. Gonna initiate by providing consultation and conducting workshops. While my target audience would consist mostly of undergraduates, I am not sure how responsive they would be. The idea just came out in my head a few weeks ago and I have been obsessed with it ever since. It’s gonna require a lot of work: conducting market research, marketing the workshops, and coming out with my own material for the programme.

Probably not gonna happen in the near future but considering how this country isn’t as strict and limiting as Singapore, I doubt it would require much effort from me to get things going.

For now, just gonna take one step at a time and kick start the next semester with as much enthusiasm as I came here to begin with.

6 days would seem like too much time to spend in SG, but unfortunately my schedule has been so packed that I have to squeeze time between running my own errands and meeting people.

Wednesday
I arrived in SG in the afternoon, mom came to fetch me and we had lunch together.
Went back home for a very long nap because I didn’t want to miss my morning flight so I hardly slept the previous night. Met up with an old friend for dinner/supper before I went to buy some medicine and necessities to bring back to Thailand.

Thursday
Sent the car for an overdue servicing. Caught up with Torrance for a late lunch before heading off to eat again with some of my friends from University, then finally met Pow Wee at night to eat again.

Friday
Caught up with Jolene, Gerald and Augs for lunch. We were talking about random stuff when I suddenly recalled that I paid Gerald $80 to complete my polytechnic Final Year Project for me, which he did and ended up spending less time on his own FYP. Went back home and had dinner with mom and sis, before heading out again to meet an ex-colleague who is interested in working in Thailand too and wanted me to share my experience.

Saturday
Met up with Zhihong who treated me to Tim Ho Wan for breakfast. We didn’t order a lot but we both agreed that the prices there were pretty affordable anyway. Met up with Jacky for lunch and we had a few hours to kill so both of us ended up back at my place to get some rest. Jacky had to head off to a birthday party so I went off to church on my own. Was in church alone but yet I hardly felt alone. There were familiar faces everywhere and I kept bumping into friends who welcomed me back. Met up with my cell group after service and had dinner with them, before heading off to meet Pow Wee and my ex-colleague again to have some drinks.

Sunday
Woke up slightly hungover from the previous night. Gonna idle for a bit before meeting my cell group leader for some proper catching up, then meeting my usual bunch of friends for dinner.. And probably heading back to the same place I was drinking last night because I have a bottle of half-finished Martell there.

Flight is tomorrow afternoon and a cell group member has graciously offered to send me to the airport.

Tomorrow is the last day of the school term before the students get a one-month holiday. The school is organizing a mini parade in the morning and students will be marching around the neighbourhood, complete with a marching band, flags and banners. The rest of the day will be spent in the school premises for their sports day. Should be ending this term on a joyful note I guess.

6 more days before I am back in SG for 6 days.
Would love to say that 6 days is a long time to spend in SG, but unfortunately I have too many things to do, too many errands to run, and too many people to meet.

Yesterday marked my last teaching day of the first semester. The next 2 weeks only comprise of exams and post-exam activities, such as the sports day. The students will then have a 3-week holiday while teachers continue to work through the school holidays, preparing for the new semester, and attending courses and seminars.

Despite that, I managed to squeeze some time out to swing by Singapore from 16-21 October.

I guess everything is good for now.

I managed to defer my NS commitments and have successfully been granted my exit permit.
I managed to open a bank account and have a debit card I can use.
I managed to get medical insurance at only 599 baht a year (I can go to any hospital for free).

1. Underestimated how tedious it is to set exam papers
Initially I thought I was able to finish setting the mid-term exam papers for Primary 3-6 by yesterday night. While I could have easily just copied everything from the Internet, I risk running into copyright issues should the exam papers get leaked. Hence I decided to do everything from scratch. I created my own questions, and even wrote my own comprehension passages. I ended up submitting the exam papers for vetting this afternoon at 4:30pm, even though I worked through last evening and only left my office at 11:20pm. It took me much longer than I expected.

2. “Everyone is corrupt, I’ve come to learn”
No, I am not referring to my church even though a fair bit has been revealed to me about whatever happened, and what is currently going on. Last weekend, I witnessed the Thai opposition protest and there were plenty of riot police all around town. The protest was basically with regards to Abhisit and Thaksin. I shall reserve my comments about Thai politics here, but one thing I have learnt from the Thais is that they acknowledge that everyone is corrupt. The Thais have no problems with certain individuals being corrupt, however their mentality is that “You can put all the money you want into your own pocket – I don’t care.. But you must still do your job properly.” This applies everywhere. I am paid as per what my contract with the school stated, however Thai teachers are not bound by any contract. Some teachers leave at the end of the month as soon as they receive their salaries. No resignation notice is required, but this works both ways. Sometimes the management of the school underpays several teachers due to “lack of funds” but really, money goes into their own pockets. There are no laws or any kind of enforcement to protect individuals, institutions or organizations.

I have probably learnt a lot more over the past few months, but just wanna keep this site alive with something new to read.

I have been teaching here for slightly more than 2 months, and more or less, already culturally assimilated. Although their system here is really no system at all, I have been able to work my way around things and dodge the unnecessary arrows.

By God’s grace, my efforts for the past 2 months have been recognized and I will be getting a small pay increment next month. However the school has also requested that I stretch myself a bit more and conduct some extra classes to help the weaker students.

There was a particular incident when I was informed at the very last minute to stand in for a Secondary 3 class. The class starts at 3:30pm but I was informed at 3:50pm that the teacher is unavailable and I had to stand in. “Just teach a simple lesson,” I was instructed.

All my materials are for Primary 3-6. I have no lesson material and no lesson plan to use for this Secondary 3 class. I spent 2 minutes to do a quick Google search for some simple grammar lessons and off I went into the classroom. This is my first time standing in front of a group of 15 year olds. I was too used to little kids who would sit down and keep quiet obediently.

Sure there was a bunch of notorious boys who were sitting at the back of the class and paid no attention to me, but the girls who sat in front were better. Though they were also talking half the time, they copied down whatever I wrote on the board and also took note of the various grammar rules.

At the end of the class, one of the girls approached me and asked in Thai, “Can you teach us?”

I thought she meant it casually, but I later learnt that the class doesn’t like their current English teacher and preferred my teaching, even though they’ve just met me for 35 minutes.

While I’m confident that I am probably able to prepare a better lesson with advance notice, I am not sure if taking more than what I can handle will eventually wear me out.

But I guess you can safely say that I am enjoying what I am currently doing.